tpaine defends America from religious zealots.
Posted on 07/09/2004 9:19:09 AM PDT by tpaine
This website very insidiously interprets our US Constitution in a pro-Statist manner. IE --- "The Bill of Rights did not apply to the states."
"The Bill of Rights was understood, at its ratification, to be a bar on the actions of the federal government.
Many people today find this to be an incredible fact. The fact is, prior to incorporation, discussed below, the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states."
It is incredible, seeing the author completely ignores the supremacy clause in Art. VI.
He then goes on to bash our 2nd Amendment:
"Recognizing that the need to arm the populace as a militia is no longer of much concern, but also realizing that firearms are a part of our history and culture and are used by many for both personal defense and sport, this site has proposed a new 2nd Amendment - an amendment to replace the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution. This proposed text is offered as a way to spark discussion of the topic.
Section 1. The second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.
Section 2. The right of the people to keep arms reasonable for hunting, sport, collecting, and personal defense shall not be infringed.
Section 3. Restrictions of arms must be found to be reasonable under Section 2 by a two-thirds vote of Congress in two consecutive sessions of Congress before they can be forwarded to the President for approval.
This proposed amendment is a truer representation of how our society views our freedom to bear arms. Because "reasonableness" can be far too elastic, the two-Congress restriction requires that two Congresses in a row pass the same bill - this allows both thoughtful reflection and for the opinions of the people, to be expressed between these votes, to be heard (both at the ballot box and in general). It is an unusual, but not unprecedented, way of passing legislation.
Finally, the courts would have the ultimate authority in determining if a restriction is not reasonable, providing a final layer of protection (after the two pairs of debate in the House and Senate and the President's own agreement). The militia is removed from the equation, greatly clarifying the purpose of the amendment.
Historical note: in Section 2, the "collecting" clause was added, and Section 3 is a replacement for "The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation" after concerns over "reasonableness" were examined more fully.
Reasonable restrictions do seem to be the way to go, acknowledging the Amendment, but molding it, as we've done with much of the Constitution.
After all, we have freedom of speech in the United States, but you are not truly free to say whatever you wish. You cannot incite violence without consequence; you cannot libel someone without consequence; you cannot shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater without consequence. Why cannot gun ownership by similarly regulated without violating the Constitution?
The trick is finding that balance between freedom and reasonable regulation. Gun ownership is indeed a right - but it is also a grand responsibility. With responsibility comes the interests of society to ensure that guns are used safely and are used by those with proper training and licensing. If we can agree on this simple premise, it should not be too difficult to work out the details and find a proper compromise."
Know you enemy.. This man Steve Mount is NOT a friend of our Constitution.
(Excerpt) Read more at usconstitution.net ...
All of us have provided you with documentation that the second amendment does not, and never has, applied to the states.
In order to put this issue to rest, now it's your turn to provide the rest of us with your documentation that it does. And please omit the flowery quotes from speeches in the past -- quotes and 25 cents will get you a cup of coffee.
I want court rulings, scholarly interpretations, specific references to the second amendment as it applies to the states.
If the very best you can do is some obscure quote by Benjamin Franklin that "the people shall be armed, dagnubbit!", then we'll know that your position is based more on feelings rather than facts.
This is it, tpaine, time to put up or shut up.
He'll do neither!
Or any amendment in the BOR for that matter.
"Rights" are incorporated because the USSC woke up one morning and decided that some particular right is so fundamental to "liberty" that the state must also protect it. What a crock. If the state felt that way, it would have "incorporated" that right into the state constitution.
Many did, and actually provided more protection than federal laws.
Talk about an activist court. And the icing on the "we know better than the states" cake was that not only did the court force the states to protect that right, it also defined that right. For example, "free speech" = nude dancing. Why? Because the USSC says so, that's why. Result? All states must allow it.
All of us have provided you with documentation that the second amendment does not, and never has, applied to the states.
No, you have never provided me with such factual evidence. You provide me with 'legal' opinions that are repugnant to the very principles of our Constitution.
In order to put this issue to rest, now it's your turn to provide the rest of us with your documentation that it does.
The 2nd Amendment is quite clear, as is the supremacy clause of Art. VI. It applies the Constitution/BOR's to the States, as the "Law of the Land".
And please omit the flowery quotes from speeches in the past -- quotes and 25 cents will get you a cup of coffee. I want court rulings, scholarly interpretations, specific references to the second amendment as it applies to the states. If the very best you can do is some obscure quote by Benjamin Franklin that "the people shall be armed, dagnubbit!", then we'll know that your position is based more on feelings rather than facts. This is it, tpaine, time to put up or shut up.
I've put it up, paulsen. Many times in fact.
Now it's time for YOU to refute the plain words of the supremacy clause & the 2nd.
Time to put up or shut up.
Yeah, it's called the "rule of law". As opposed to your "rule of man".
You got nothing, tpaine, nothing. The Supremacy Clause does not apply to laws that only affect the federal government. How can it possibly?
Unfortunately, you are 100% correct.
The same way the USSC ruling on nude dancing made state laws against it less secure. All it takes is one lawsuit to overturn state laws. Which there were.
You've pushed this fraud before and you are just as wrong now. Here's why:
USSC broadened the definition of free speech to include nude dancing and some State/local laws were nullified. Had USSC given a narrow definition and said nude dancing is not protected speech, no laws would have been struck down.
Same with the RKBA. If USSC says an individual RKBA is not protected by the Second Amendment, then States decide. If USSC says an individual RKBA is protected by the Second Amendment, then some State/local anti-gun laws would be struck down.
And there are plenty of gun grabbers out there with beau coup funding to challenge state handgun laws, knowing in advance that they have the green light from the USSC.
They are doing it now and have been at it for decades. What evidence do you have they are being restrained in any way whatsoever?
State handgun laws would topple like dominoes.
Unsupported nonsense.
The only way State laws would fall is from a USSC decision that says the RKBA is an individual right.
A USSC decision saying that there is no individual RKBA would leave the question to the States.
The Mormon Question Mormons and their opponents began their conflict in a legal world that was far different from the one they created. In 1830, when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded in upstate New York, the federal government was weak and legal power was decentralized. The national Constitution, which occupies so much legal space in the early twenty-first century, was all but invisible in most Americans' day-to-day lives. If anything at all was clear about constitutional law in the new nation, moreover, it was that the constitutional amendments known as the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states. Freedom of religion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech, trial by jury, the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, unreasonable searches and seizures by government officials, all of these limited the power of the national government. But unlike the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in which federal constitutional rights have been applied against state as well as federal government action, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, states were immune from federal intervention in crucial areas of civil liberties. Confirming earlier cases, the U.S. Supreme Court held in 1845 that the First Amendment, which addresses the "free exercise" of religion as well as separation of church and state, did not limit the rights of states to govern within their borders.[5]
The establishment clause, for example, as the provision of the First Amendment that prohibits Congress from enacting legislation "respecting an establishment of religion" is called by constitutional lawyers, prevented the federal government from establishing a given denomination as the official federal church. It also protected the established religions in six of the original thirteen states from federal interference. Thus it is a mistake to assume that the national Constitution guaranteed the separation of church and state or religious liberty to all citizens from its inception: "[T]hat is left," held the Supreme Court, "to the state constitutions and laws." There had been momentous and important changes in law and religion by the 1830s, to be sure, but it was not the federal Constitution that mattered.[6] ...
Disestablishment, or the separation of institutions of religion from institutions of government, had been a new and potentially upsetting idea in the late eighteenth century. But the American colonies, and then the new states, especially in the mid-Atlantic region, were as diverse religiously as they were ethnically. Pennsylvania, just to give one example, was home to English Quakers, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, German Moravians, and many more. In the new nation, the separation of church and state formally began in Virginia with the enactment of Thomas Jefferson's Bill for the Establishment of Religious Freedom in 1785. Jefferson's bill was not motivated by the conviction that religious belief would flourish in a disestablished state; instead, the skeptical Jefferson hoped to purge Virginia politics of religious influence. Religious diversity affected politics as well as worship in Virginia, however; Baptists and other dissenters were crucial to the enactment of the bill, as they joined forces with Jefferson and elite rationalists to defeat the Anglican establishment.
Six states retained establishments into the national period, though they generally were weak and underfinanced. Other states either followed Virginia's lead or had never had a formal establishment. Even those states that maintained a formal establishment soon found that religious diversity and republican government undermined its value to the holders of the privilege. By the second quarter of the nineteenth century, only Massachusetts maintained an establishment, and it, too, was in crisis. Following the lead of other states, the Supreme Judicial Court in 1820 held that the majority of voters (rather than only those with the most impeccable religious credentials) could decide whom to employ as their minister. Disestablishment eventually followed this decision. Embracing democratic rule for established faiths, state court judges also implicitly attacked nondemocratic theologies. In the early Republic, Roman Catholicism was the primary object of such attacks. American judges, by convincing themselves that democratic institutions were essential to religious as well as secular governance, allied themselves with a fundamentally Protestant conception of religious liberty. Local decision-making, majority rule, and a minister's accountability to his congregation rather than to a remote and hierarchical (read Roman) authority all distinguished Protestantism in American "nativist" theory from foreign, "papist" Romanism. Thus in a constitutional world defined in part by anti-Catholicism, separation of church and state took root and flourished.[8]
The law of religious liberty also dovetailed comfortably with Protestantism. As one eminent New York judge put it, religious freedom was bounded by majority rule in much the same way that establishments were. The "moral discipline" created by the "people of this state" reflected their "profess[ion of] the general doctrines of christianity, as the rule of their faith and practice." The great majority of the people were Christians, and the law mirrored their preferences. An argument that religious liberty should protect anything other than "general [Protestant] Christianity" was thus an attempt to shield undemocratic beliefs and practices, confusing the abuse of liberty with its exercise. Disestablishment and constitutional protections of religious liberty in the states may have unsettled centuries of English legal tradition, but by the 1830s, American jurists recrafted links between democracy and "general" Protestantism, reassuring themselves that their government was neither heathen nor sectarian.[9]
The topic of this thread is the Second Amendment.
If you're going to quote Bork, I thought everyone should be aware of anti-individual RKBA view of the Second Amendment.
And if you're going make snide comments about Justice Thomas, then it is appropriate to let folks know his pro-individual RKBA view of the Second Amendment.
So do you side with Justice Thomas or Judge Bork's view of the Second Amendment.
This thread is part of a personal vendetta of tpaine's against paulsen.
bumpkin
Baloney! There were laws that defined and allowed nude dancing. Citizens filed suit to stop the practice, saying that nothing in the Constitution allows nude dancing. If the USSC said that nude dancing wasn't protected speech, the laws would have been struck down
If the USSC gives a narrow definition and says that political ads less than 30 days before an election are not protected speech, no laws would be struck down. Do I have that correct?
States that currently define and protect political ads less than 30 days prior to an election -- those laws can remain on the books?
Well then, I suggest you stick with it, rather than going on about, "Do you agree with Justice Thomas' comments on substantial effects and the Commerce Clause?"
If you're going to change the subject to Justice Thomas' opinion on the awesome powers of Congress, then allow me to quote the opinion of Judge Bork on the awesome powers of the USSC.
And as Justice Thomas well knows, he and four unelected and unaccountable others on the USSC can frustrate and overrule 535 elected and accountable congressional representatives -- so I ask again, who shall we fear more?
THE Conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution.
RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all or any of which Articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures, to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz.:
ARTICLES in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.
--- as Justice Thomas well knows, he and four unelected and unaccountable others on the USSC can frustrate and overrule 535 elected and accountable congressional representatives -- so I ask again, who shall we fear more?
97 paulsen
______________________________________
Apparently, it has never occured to paulsen that we should fear ALL of the Fed/State/Local government officials who are violating their Art. VI oaths to support our Constitution as the Law of the Land.
Bumpkin.
Of course it is. I gave you a link that debunked your claim. Rather than refuting the facts, you went to a different page of my linked source in an attempt to discredit the author of the web site, thereby hoping to discredit my link.
I would say that he took it personally in his post #31 to you. And he was a heck of a lot nicer to you than I would have been.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.